INSANITY CAUSED BY A BELIEF IN DEMONIAC POSSESSION.

THE science of mind cannot advance without receiving and justly acknowledging contributions from the discoveries and developments of modern Spiritualism. What mediums have learned, and especially what they have gradually and reluctantly unlearned, by a long winding chain of exceedingly hard experiences and misimpressions, must be recognized and incorporated in the world's new volume on metaphysics.

Mediums have learned by heart, and with much confusion and suffering, the deep meaning embodied in the terms "psychological influence." The self-abnegational state, called by Spiritualists" psychological," begins to educate a medium by misimpressing him; and thus it unhappily often miseducates him concerning his own subjective experiences and conditions.

He learns, or at least he has an opportunity to learn, that self-investigation is next to impossible. The first seemingly undeniable impression is, that the medium, as to his own proper volition and personality, is displaced, in the occupation of his own body, by the determined ingression and complete possession of its organs and parts

by another individualized intelligence. And so honestly believing, because so thoroughly misimpressed, the medium's characteristics and personal presence are totally transformed into a vivid personation of the supposed character in possession. So complete and so instantaneous is this subjective transformation-so faithful is the self-abnegated mind to the conception formed of the occupying intelligence-that even susceptible observers become equally psychologized, and some continue to be long misimpressed with the evidences presented.

The truth at the foundation, is this: Mind can affect mind. A firm, compact, resolute mind can easily overwhelm a quiet, mellow, sympathetic mind. Opinionated, dogmatic, positive mentalities override the personal convictions and tyrannize over the private liberties of sensative, gentle, confiding, and passively harmonious mentalities. This, in brief, is the truth, and the whole truth, at the bottom of evil-spirit possession. And it also adequately and conclusively explains all the perplexing manifestations of the witchcraft-phenomena of ancient and modern times.

Mediums are usually plastic-minded, kind-hearted, and passively good-natured; with laudable aspirations to be developed, to become spiritualized, and to render acceptable service to their fellow-men. These are just the conditions essentially requisite for the reception of

psychological influences emanating from any source; and this, too, is exactly the mental state for self-abnegating and misimpressing the medium's personal consciousness; all which frequently ultimates in the importation of miseducating testimony to witnesses, and a great blunder as to the lesson intended.

The second effect is this: The medium becomes-because of the accepted loss of his self-possession—irresponsible and automatic, moving and feeling and acting in the character of the (supposed) pro tempore occupant of his body. In this mental condition he is self-assertion itself, a king, a Plato, a Jesus, or any other important personage, on whom the misimpressed imagination has been long fixed; and thus begins a series of personifications, and a peculiar arrangement of words, and possibly many entertaining orations, all proceeding from the body and mouth of the medium.

In delineating this state and its manifestations, I do not mean to deny that, sometimes, the medium is in reality receiving and imparting impressions from some intelligence outside of himself, and may be in communication with some mind now inhabiting the Summerland.*

To return: The effect of this irresponsible mental state is manifested in a sort of momentary fatalism. The believer, as well as the medium, is inclined to sink

* For extended description of this state, see Gt. Har., vol. iii.

into a tranquil indifference-with impassiveness to the influences of industry, wealth, distinction, or praise; being neither glad, nor sorry for anything; disinclination for exertion, without a large grand sense of personal power; meritless, apathetic, and a feeling of being involved in and overwhelmed by the Inevitable and the Unavoidable, a helpless child in the invisible hands of an unknown Destiny. But this effect need not be evolved and need not exist; and it does follow only in cases where the "psychological" influence has dominated the feeling and the will and miseducated the honest judgment, while the true effect is: Personal impressibility to the spiritual presence and thoughts and wishes of visitors from the Summerland. Any other effect is illegitimate and erroneous, and all discordant effects will cease with a truer knowledge of and obedience to the laws of mental contact and control.

THE DOCTRINE OF EVIL POSSESSION.

The manifestations of witchcraft, and the doctrine of evil-spirit possession, is the truth of psychological mediumship twisted and perverted. "Hypochondriacal and epileptic persons," according to the author of the Philosophical Dictionary, "and women laboring under hysterical affections, have always been considered the

victims of evil spirits, malignant demons, and divine vengeance. We have seen that this disease was called the sacred disease; and that while the physicians were ignorant, the priests of antiquity obtained everywhere the care and management of such diseases.

"When the symptoms were very complicated, the patient was supposed to be possessed with many demons -a demon of madness, one of luxury, one of avarice, one of obstinacy, one of shortsightedness, one of deafness; and the exorciser could not easily miss finding a demon of foolery created, with another of knavery.

"The Jews expelled devils from the bodies of the possessed by the application of the root barath, and a certain formula of words; our Saviour expelled them by a divine virtue; he communicated that virtue to the Apostles, but it is now greatly impaired.

"A short time since an attempt was made to renew the history of St. Paulin. That saint saw on the roof of a church a poor demoniac, who walked under, or rather upon, this roof or ceiling, with his head below and his feet above, nearly in the manner of a fly. St. Paulin clearly perceived that the man was possessed, and sent several leagues off for some relics of St. Felix of Nola, which were applied to the patient as blisters. The demon who supported the man against the roof instantly fled, and the demoniac fell down upon the pavement.